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Chapter 1: What influences shaped Michael Frayn's diverse writing career?
Welcome to This Cultural Life, the series in which leading artistic figures reveal the influences and experiences that most inspired their own creativity. I'm John Wilson and my guest in this episode is the author Michael Frayn. Over a seven decade career, Frayn has been acclaimed as a novelist, a playwright, a journalist, translator and memoirist.
From his comedies, including the stage-fast Noises Off, a screenplay for Clockwise starring John Cleese, and the novels Headlong and Skioss, to the complex political, historical and scientific themes of his stage plays Democracy and Copenhagen, he's been prolific in a diverse array of genres and subjects.
He's also renowned for his stage adaptations of Russian classics, including several works by Anton Chekhov. At 92, Michael Frayn advised on a recent revival of Copenhagen at the Hampstead Theatre. Michael Frayne, welcome to This Cultural Life, or I should say, thank you for welcoming us into your home. Well, thank you very much for coming here.
I'm really interested, Michael, looking around your library, looking at the shelves, just as there are so many facets to your writing, so many different themes, they seem to be ordered by theme on the shelves. So there's nuclear physics down here, there's lots of travel, there's a philosophy section clearly up there, isn't there?
Yes, and there's a Cyrillic section here.
What about at home as a child? Can you remember books at home?
We had the complete works of Shakespeare, which I think my father must have won in a competition or something, but he didn't go in much books. That was about it. Really? I'm not sure I can remember any other books. No, I had quite a lot of books, but I don't think my parents did.
You were born in 1933. What are your earliest memories of home life, family life?
Well, we lived in the suburbs in Yule, which is not all that far from here, the other side of Kingston. My father was a rep for a firm that made asbestos building components. And he always said he thought he could get me into the firm to train as a rep. I would have been the worst rep in the world.
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Chapter 2: How did Michael Frayn's childhood impact his literary journey?
Of course, yes. Of course, so your first plays. Those were my first plays, yes.
So did you know as a child that writing was the future for you, do you think?
Yes, I sort of knew that what I wanted was to be a writer. My father was an influence as well because I remember I wrote an essay on the house I would like to live in one day. My father read it. He was not much given to encouragement. It wasn't the way then. But he said, it's very good. Maybe you ought to be a journalist. And maybe that's what put the seed in my head.
So I also, I wanted to be a writer, but I also did want to be a journalist. In your notes, you also mentioned a teacher at school called Mr. Brady.
Mr. Brady, yes. He saved me. It was a particular encouragement.
Yeah.
Well, I had a rather bad patch after my mother died. I had to move schools and move from class to class.
I started by being more or less top of the class and rapidly sank to being bottom of the class and everything because I discovered I could get the approval of my classmates by mocking the teachers, which was probably quite a good professional training, as it turned out in life, but with very bad effects at the time. But we had one teacher, Mr Brady, who taught us English.
He didn't really teach us English. He taught us in the periods marked English on the timetable. And he used to mark my essays, all 30 out of 30, and read them out to the class. I was tremendously cheered by this, very encouraged. So, of course, I worked very hard at pleasing him, writing the essays. And one day, when I was about 15, I think, he read us Shelley's Ode to a Skylark.
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Chapter 3: What role did education play in Michael Frayn's development as a writer?
No, they were terrible poems.
In your 2002 novel Spies, your elderly protagonist looks back on childhood events in which he and a friend become convinced that the friend's mother is a spy. The book's very much about the imagination and the uncertainty of memory. So how much did it owe to your own uncertain memories of childhood?
Well, it starts off with a very clear memory. The two central characters, the little boys, are very much based on myself and my closest friend at the time. And he was the leader in all our games. And what I remember clearly is his saying at some point, out of the blue, my mother is a German spy. And it was obviously the start of another game.
And I think we followed his mother around for an hour or two and she didn't get in touch with the German high command or steal any plans for secret aircraft or whatever. And we got bored and gave up. But I just started to think, what would have happened if we'd been a bit more persistent and we followed her around?
What would we have made of an adult life, particularly if there turned out to be some sort of discrepancies in it, as there is in most people's lives?
That afternoon, when Keith's mother has retired for her rest, we enter the sitting room and glide silently across to the desk. Keith bends down and peers at the blotter through the magnifying glass from his stamp-collecting kit. I think I can make out a few odd letters, and perhaps even one or two syllables, "'Thurs, possibly. "'And if you... "'Code,' whispers Keith.'
Those two central characters are based on memories, and my friend's parents are very much based on my friend's real parents. A funny thing occurred towards the end of writing the novel. It occurred to me that if I was still alive, my friend might still be alive, and he might not like the picture I painted of his parents. So I tried to get in touch with him. I couldn't find him anywhere.
But before I finished the book, out of the blue, I got a letter saying, you won't remember me, but we used to play games together when we were children and we had a camp in a hedge from where we fought the third right. In case I still didn't remember who he was, and of course I did, he said at the bottom, the one with the terrible father. Ah.
So, of course, I had to get in touch with him and tell him that I was writing this book. And when I finished, I showed it to him. I don't know what I would have done if he'd said, I really find this very offensive and I'm very hurt by what you've said about my father.
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